this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023

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Reddit mods are organizing blackouts to protest against API changes (www.reddit.com)

submitted 2 years ago by anji@lemmy.anji.nl to c/technology@beehaw.org

133 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Some of the planned blackouts will be temporary, others plan to shut their subreddits down indefinitely in protest.

(page 2) 50 comments

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[–] 108beads@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Apparently, the substance and quality of thought Redditors post may be a disposable commodity. That is eyeballs on ads may be secondary to our function as generators of natural language as grist for training artificial intelligence—with third-party apps a civilian casualty in a bigger war for the almighty dollar.

According to https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/reddit-sparks-outrage-after-a-popular-app-developer-said-it-wants-him-to-pay-20-million-a-year-for-data-access/ar-AA1c06d9:

Part of the motivation for Reddit’s plan involves the surging popularity of artificial intelligence.

Large language models such as ChatGPT are developed using training data, which in many cases is sourced from content found across the internet. Reddit should not be expected to provide that data to “some of the largest companies in the world for free,” CEO Steve Huffman told the New York Times in a recent interview.

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[–] spoonful@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago (20 children)

Glad to see so many subreddits contributing to this. Reddit IPO is the worst thing that happened to it and the original founders would have never allowed reddit to get to this point.

The thing is that people would gladly play 2-5usd/mo to keep 3rd party clients but Reddit is making super difficult on purpose. No way they are getting 5usd/mo per user from ads.

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[–] smartwater0897@lemmy.one 1 points 2 years ago

Very good. People have had enough.

[–] Humanoid@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I support the blackouts, and I'm happy to see some of the larger subreddits starting to join, but I highly doubt this will change the API policy. The Reddit administration knew they were committing to a destructive course of action; they are not stupid, they're pursuing an aggressive, purposeful corporate monetization strategy. That said, I do hope more major subreddits speak out, and I think the 48-hour blackout will open some users' eyes to Reddit's questionable philosophy.

[–] Suppoze@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

Even more so, I agree with @tangentism's thought in this post "It’s great that subs and users are organising to fight this but maybe Reddit should be allowed to carry out this change and metaphorically shoot itself in the face? This is just the latest in a long horrifying series of policies that the admins have pushed through, actions they have failed to take, or when they finally did, it was long after the horse had bolted."

If Reddit would backstep from this change somehow, then the rare opportunity of change will close shortly. Reddit just needs to push this through and hopefully it'll burn itself down.

[–] CheshireSnake@lemmy.one 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

I agree with this. Pretty sure Reddit has already done their share of research on the possible backlash and figured it was still profitable. I highly doubt they'd change their mind now.

My experience here has been great, tbh. Much less toxicity than on Reddit. I'm missing a few subs I frequented there and the app needs some work, but at least there's no big corporation telling me what to do.

[–] Humanoid@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm in the same boat as you in regards to Reddit; there are certainly some niche places that I will miss but there are already good alternatives growing. I'm taking this opportunity to both re-evaluate how I engage with the internet and take the time to choose communities that better align with my values.

[–] animist@lemmy.one 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah I'm planning to just buy extra server space and start my own instance. I'd love to see the fediverse grow

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[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Not surprised to see /r/ProCSS in that list. It was founded in response to another of Reddit's terrible decisions. Speaking of which, I wonder if Lemmy could be made to support community-specific CSS stylesheets like old Reddit could? That'd be neat. Of course, it would need to support user-created communities first.

I also wonder if any of those subreddits will direct people to the Fediverse. Hope so.

[–] OneFluffyBoi@octodon.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@argv_minus_one Oh yeah, I remember when they promised that CSS support was coming... 7 years ago. As for redirecting people to the Fediverse, some of the apps like RedReader are openly considering it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RedReader/comments/13ylk42/update_3_reddit_effectively_kills_off_third_party/

"Right now I'm considering the possibility of modifying the app to connect to a Reddit alternative such as Lemmy or Mastodon. There would be something very satisfying about some of the bigger Reddit apps driving their userbase to alternative sites too, and if this helped one of those platforms gain traction then that would be a step in the right direction."

Personally I think it wouldn't be a bad idea if some of these app creators hosted their own Fediverse instance and sent all their users to it.

[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Problem: millions of redditors currently use third-party Reddit apps. Abruptly sending millions of people to the Lemmy instance you just deployed is a sure-fire way to break it, and maybe bring down the whole federated network of Lemmy instances. Lemmy currently has issues scaling above a few hundred users, as Beehaw has recently discovered, let alone millions.

Problem: Lemmy is a completely different protocol, and there's less than a month left before all third-party Reddit apps become useless and everyone uninstalls them. That's an exceedingly tight timetable and an exceedingly unforgiving deadline.

That said, it's now or never; death or glory. We're not going to get another chance to bring over that many people to Lemmy all at once.

[–] OneFluffyBoi@octodon.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@argv_minus_one Is that scaling problem a software issue, or a hosting issue? There are other Fediverse platforms like Akkoma that use Elixir, so maybe they'd fair better? Could also pick several federated instances to distribute users to.

[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Lemmy is written in async Rust. The language isn't going to create a scaling problem. Well-written async Rust applications have handled vastly heavier workloads than Lemmy without a hitch.

There are, however, some serious performance bottlenecks that need to be dealt with, and it remains to be seen whether any more bottlenecks remain undiscovered in either the protocol or the implementation. To be honest, as someone working on a Rust+Postgres application myself, this is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night.

Hosting can of course be an issue as well. I'm under the impression that Beehaw had to go up several tiers in its hosting plan in the last few days in response to the surge in demand. I assume this was done to work around the aforementioned bottlenecks by simply throwing more hardware at the problem, but I don't know.

[–] OneFluffyBoi@octodon.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@argv_minus_one I see. The more I look into it, the more I think Lemmy should still be considered beta software like kbin, TBH. Some important features are still missing and the optimization is lacking.

[–] ericjmorey@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

I do consider Lemmy to be beta software.

But it's currently the best option.

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[–] Gork@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

This is like watching an incredibly slow train wreck. We know what the outcome looks like, but are (mostly) powerless to stop it unless these blackouts work.

[–] HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Let it implode. Pass the popcorn!

[–] cavemeat@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

hereitcomes.png

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